


Slash Notation

by sarkymoocow (parenthetical)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M, Music, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-26
Updated: 2004-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-02 00:50:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parenthetical/pseuds/sarkymoocow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Music is what feelings sound like." ~Anon</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slash Notation

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the lovely BloodDragon. The definitions are partly based on [this website](http://www.dolmetsch.com/theoryindex.htm) and partly on my own slightly rusty memories. "Slash Notation" is the name of a kind of musical notation.

_Crash._

Harry stopped so abruptly in the middle of the corridor that the tea slopped over the rim of the cup he was carrying and burned his fingers. Cursing under his breath, he set the cup down on a nearby table and dried his hand on his jeans. Only then did he realise that the table which his cup was currently staining was an old Malfoy heirloom. He felt a momentary pang of guilt, knowing that Draco would not be pleased if the table was ruined.

Then again, this was a _Malfoy_ table. Considering that over the centuries it had probably faced everything from blood and Dark magic to Lucius Malfoy’s touch, a little spilled tea was unlikely to do it much harm. In fact, he should probably be more worried about what the table might do to the tea...

_Crash. Crash._

Distracted from the tea’s plight, Harry turned to stare at the door from behind which the terrible sound was coming, and bit his lip. He tended not to go into Draco’s workroom very often. When your lover was studying Experimental Magic at an elite wizarding university, you quickly learned to expect the _very_ unexpected if you wandered into their workspace. After the Ashwinder incident a few months ago – Harry shuddered at the memory – he’d sworn he wouldn’t enter Draco’s workroom again unless specifically invited. And so he normally did his best to ignore whatever odd sounds, smells, or coloured smoke emerged from it, even though his curiosity often nearly strangled him.

Still, better to be strangled by his curiosity than by Draco, who was known, on occasion, to become a little – _annoyed_ – if interrupted in the middle of something important.

_Crash. Crash. Crash._

Harry tried to remember whether Draco had mentioned that he was working on anything which might cause such a terrible sound. A fortnight earlier, he’d started on a new module... Creative Magic, that was it, although Harry couldn’t remember much more than the name. Draco had a habit of becoming terribly excited at the start of a new course and rambling on and on and on about it for hours, until Harry’s eyes glazed over and his thoughts drifted from Draco’s words to how much he liked seeing Draco’s eyes light up like that... And inevitably, he would eventually act on his rather distracting thoughts, which generally put an end to Draco’s ramblings for some time.

Really, Harry rather liked that part of Draco starting a new course.

But then came the stage he didn’t like at all: Draco would become thoroughly engrossed in whatever he was studying, spending most of his time closeted in his workroom when he wasn’t attending classes, forgetting meals, scribbling on bits of parchment, and generally seeming to be only half-aware of Harry’s existence.

Harry really couldn’t _stand_ that stage.

It had been going on for almost two weeks, this time, and Harry was beginning to wonder if it was time to take desperate measures. Like going into Draco’s workroom, which was almost certain to get his attention, albeit not necessarily in a way Harry would enjoy.

_Crash. Crash._

A pitiful whine made Harry glance down just in time to see their pet Crup crawl under the Malfoy table.

Well, that settled it, Harry decided. If the noise was bad enough to drive the dog to seek refuge under the _Malfoy table_, he was perfectly within his rights to be concerned about what might be going on in that workroom.

Harry reached out for the door handle and then paused. He’d once walked into this room and found himself staring into the jaws of an enormous blood-red dragon, without even a chance of reaching his wand before it charred him to a crisp. Harry was convinced that particular incident had taken several decades off his life, although if Draco hadn’t turned out to be studying Illusions on that occasion, the damage would have been far worse.

That was one lesson Harry had taken to heart. He pulled out his wand before very cautiously opening the door and stepping inside Draco’s workroom.

_Crash._

Harry stared. He had thought he was prepared for anything, but he had to admit that the sight of Draco sitting slumped in front of a grand piano and banging his head against the keys had not crossed his mind.

He glanced suspiciously around the room, just in case something dangerous was lurking in a corner and waiting to pounce, but everything seemed surprisingly non-threatening. There was nothing but the usual bookshelves and cupboards of potions ingredients, and various workspaces cluttered with papers and notes.

And, of course, the piano.

After a moment’s thought, Harry cautiously put his wand away again and slid the door closed behind him. Draco banged his head against the keys of the piano once more – _crash_ – then turned his head to the left to face Harry, the keys which were pressed down beneath his head still ringing out a terrible discord. In the end, it was probably the mark shaped like three piano keys imprinted on Draco’s forehead which finally convinced Harry to cross the room, stepping carefully between the stacks of parchment and books scattered on the floor. He stopped just short of the piano stool where Draco still slumped, head resting on the keys, watching him.

Finally, Draco spoke. “I thought you swore you were never going to set foot in here again, after that incident with the Ashwinder?”

Harry winced. “The noise was upsetting the Crup,” he offered, half-apologetically, half-defiantly. “It even crawled under your _Malfoy table_ to try to escape it. And if that’s not desperation, I don’t know what is! So... I thought I’d better come check everything was okay in here...” He stared, mystified, at the polished black surface of the piano.

Draco sighed and straightened up, the discord finally fading completely as the keys were released. He shifted along the piano stool to his right to make room for Harry, who obediently sat down beside him.

“I’m _sure_, Harry. The only reason you came in here was your concern for the poor thing, crawling under that _beautiful antique table_, and nothing at all to do with you feeling neglected, right?”

Harry flushed, suddenly finding Draco’s scribbled page of notes on the music stand in front of him utterly fascinating. _Unstable chords. Glissando. Modulation. Appassionato._

Draco laughed unexpectedly, and ran one hand affectionately through Harry’s hair. “I really shouldn’t tease like that, should I? Especially since I’ve been spending so much time in here recently. Merlin knows the schemes _I’d_ resort to if you ever locked yourself away in your office all the time. Just as well you’re the Gryffindor of the two of us, really.”

Harry chanced a glance at him. “Well, it’s true, I’ve barely seen you over the past fortnight. And when I do see you, you’re so deep in thought you barely know I exist. Is it really so surprising that I would risk sneaking in here, even knowing there might be Ashwinders and dragons and... and _pianos_?”

“No,” Draco said softly, and pulled him close for a lingering kiss. When they finally broke apart, Draco added, “But you’re wrong to say I’ve not been thinking about you. This particular project’s all about you, actually. Anyway, I’m almost finished now – I’m having a few problems figuring out how to round it off, but soon I’ll be able to concentrate on more important things. Speaking of which...” He leaned in for another kiss, but Harry pulled back in surprise.

“What do you mean, it’s about _me_?”

“Well, _us_ would be more accurate, I suppose,” Draco said. “It’s my Creative Magic project, do you remember me telling you about it?”

Harry swallowed. He did remember Draco rambling on – and on and on – about the new module he was starting. But then he’d been distracted by the way Draco was gesturing with his hands. And eventually Harry had reached out and captured them and brought them to his mouth and...

“Um, I may have missed the finer points of your explanation,” Harry said, trying to look penitent but feeling a smile spread across his face at the memory.

Draco shook his head in mock-exasperation, but he was grinning, too. “Why does this not surprise me? Should I bother trying to explain, or are you likely to get distracted again?

Harry grinned back. “Well, no promises. But I do want to hear what this has to do with me. Or _us_, for that matter. It’s kind of nice to hear you’ve been dwelling on us all this time, rather than new uses for potions ingredients or something.”

“Well,” Draco began, “do you remember me explaining about Creative Magic?”

“Sort of,” Harry said. “I don’t think I understood it properly, though...”

“It’s about incorporating spells in creative elements –” Draco broke off at the sight of Harry’s ever-blanker expression, and tried again. “For example, you can paint spells, using the colours and patterns and shapes and textures to encode the magic. One of the girls in my class likes weaving and knitting and so on, and for her project she’s embroidering spells into a quilt. You can even dance spells – actually, the professor seems to think that even Muggles try that, bizarrely –”

“Oh, hey, I’ve heard of that,” Harry said in surprise. “Yes, some Muggles believe they can make it rain by dancing.”

Draco stared at him incredulously. “Muggles are very odd creatures, and delusional, too, it seems. As if _they_ could incorporate a weather charm into a dance. It would take a proper wizard to do that, and one well trained in Creative Magic, for that matter. I could probably do it with a bit of practice, but knowing your lack of coordination, we’d probably be swimming in toads if you tried.”

Harry might have felt mildly insulted if he hadn’t been fighting so hard to keep a straight face at the thought of Draco Malfoy performing a rain dance. Somehow, he would _have_ to find a way to convince Draco to demonstrate that sometime.

Luckily, Draco had returned to his original subject and didn’t notice Harry’s barely stifled amusement. “My project is on music, which is why I had this piano Portkeyed in here. It’s rather nice, isn’t it? I wouldn’t mind keeping it, actually, what do you think?”

“Mmm,” Harry agreed absently. “Draco, I don’t get it. If your project’s about incorporating magic into music, what’s that got to do with us?”

“No, we haven’t learned that much yet,” Draco corrected him. “Creative Magic is _difficult_ to learn. It’s not like all that wand-waving they taught us in school, where there’s one right way to do something and you learn it and that’s it. That’s why they call it Creative Magic, it’s an _art_. It’s about looking at the world in a different way, about knowing your medium so well you can use it to create the magic. It’s like... like learning a different language. You can’t write a book right away, first you have to learn the alphabet and the words and grammar and –”

“Breathe, Draco...” Harry said soothingly, starting to look a little concerned, and suspecting that if Draco began rambling now, it would be hours before he stopped again.

Draco took a deep breath. “So we won’t be learning to incorporate magic until next term. This project is just about working symbolism into our medium – music, in my case – taking a subject from real life which involves a range of emotional or theoretical elements. I thought that, considering the number of emotions we’ve gone through since we met, our relationship would be the ideal subject, so I’ve been trying to capture us in music. It’s been much more difficult than I expected, actually. And I can’t quite figure out how to finish it...”

“So, you’re trying to write a piece of music symbolising us,” Harry said slowly, still trying to figure it out. “What kind of symbolism do you mean? Using words? There are Muggles who think people are trying to control them by putting backwards words into their music, you know.”

Draco stared. “Backwards words?”

“Yes, so that you don’t notice it consciously when you’re listening. Supposedly your mind does pick up on it at some level and is influenced by it. I’m not sure it really works, though. That’s not the kind of thing you mean, is it?”

Draco was still staring. “Muggles have some truly strange ideas. It sometimes worries me that you actually _like_ them, you know. No, it’s nothing stupid like that. I need to use music theory – notes and intervals, cadences, harmony and discord, that sort of thing.” He sighed at Harry’s blank expression. “It’s like the structure of music, the language and grammar behind it. The musical equivalent of verbs and nouns and tenses and so on.”

“Oh,” Harry said uncertainly, “I s- well, no, actually, I don’t really see at all. Can you show me?”

Draco looked a little dubious. “I could try, I suppose. Bits of it, anyway. You might have to stand up again so I can bang my head off the keys, though.”

“What?!” Harry asked incredulously. “You can’t be serious! I thought that was just you throwing a tantrum before!”

Draco looked mildly offended. “A Malfoy does not _throw tantrums_, Harry. Really, now. And I’ll have you know it’s a very good use of symbolism! I’ll probably be given extra marks for it, actually.”

Harry stared at him.

“Oh, all right,” Draco admitted. “The first time it _was_ just because I lost my temper. But think about it! Remember what we were like when we first met? We clashed! Discord! And those are _musical_ concepts, Harry. That’s what I mean about putting symbolism into music. So to begin the piece I wanted a truly awful _clash_, but then it occurred to me that banging my head to create it is the perfect symbolism. Stop looking at me like that, Harry.”

Harry blinked, closed his mouth, and then opened it again to ask, “But that’s for when we first met, right? You don’t... you don’t think we’re like banging your head off a piano now. Do you?”

“Of course not,” Draco said dismissively. “But you’re jumping ahead, we haven’t reached _now_ yet.”

“Oh,” Harry said, only somewhat reassured. “What comes next, then?”

“Well, we both have our own separate melodies for a while. Yours is based around a triad, of course.” Draco reached out and held down three notes on the piano. Unlike the clash Harry had heard before, these notes sounded pleasant together. Harmonious.

“What’s that meant to symbolise?”

Draco smiled, a touch wickedly. “Come on, Harry, you’re brighter than that. Three notes. A _triad_. This particular kind is known as a “common chord”, if you need a hint. Always an appropriate word when Weasley’s involved, I can’t help but feel.”

Harry stared at him. “That’s meant to represent Ron, Hermione and me? Hey, wait, a _common_ chord? Draco!”

Draco put on an air of injured innocence. “Really, Harry, I just said it was a chord representing the three of you. It’s hardly my fault if you read too much into the symbolism...” Noticing Harry’s increasingly stormy expression, he carried on hastily, “But really, the focus is more on the relationship between you and me than on our friends. Listen to this.”

He held down two notes, and Harry winced at the sound, such a horrible contrast to the triad Draco had played a moment ago. “Another clash.”

“Yes,” Draco confirmed, “but it’s a very special kind of discord. Much more focused than simply banging my head against the keys. It’s called a ‘tritone’, and people call it “_diabolus in musica_” – the devil in music. That’s how special the way we clashed was. Though you might be interested to hear that some people consider it to be the most exciting interval – that’s the distance between two notes, the sound when you play them together – because of how dramatically it clashes, and so they use it as much as possible.”

Harry reached out and held down the two notes Draco had played, listening again to the discord. “The devil in music. I guess we were like that for a long time, weren’t we?”

“A while,” Draco agreed softly. “But then came a modulation, a change of key, and suddenly we weren’t so discordant anymore. Everything changed.”

Harry nodded absently, and reached out to pick up Draco’s notes from the music stand, scanning down the list of concepts.

“The problem is,” Draco said, shifting position to face Harry properly, swinging one leg over the piano stool to straddle it, “I’m not sure how to round the piece off. I don’t really want any finality to it because, well, the symbolism... But a fade-out doesn’t seem to symbolise us very well, either.”

“I don’t even know what most of these words mean,” Harry said in bemusement, only half-listening as he read through Draco’s notes. “I swear half of them aren’t even Engli- wait, wait. _Subdominant_? Draco, do I even want to know?”

Draco’s grin was very Slytherin. “It’s a perfectly innocent musical concept, actually, but I love the way your mind works. I must fit that into the piece somewhere...”

“Perfectly innocent,” Harry repeated in disbelief. “Like _dominant chord_, you mean?”

“Really, Harry,” Draco said mockingly, “you’ll be telling me there’s something odd about the term ‘_crotch_et’ next...”

Harry stared at him. “You’re making all this up, aren’t you?”

Draco laughed. “No, actually. But you have an impressively Slytherin mind at times. Shall I explain some of those non-English terms to you? They’re Italian, mostly.”

“Okay,” Harry said, a trifle unenthusiastically.

“It’d take a bit too long to show you with music,” Draco said, “because mostly they’re about the way in which a piece is played, rather than just a few individual notes like the things I’ve showed you so far. So...” And before Harry had realised his intentions, Draco leaned across and quickly kissed him, no more than a peck on the lips, pulling back before Harry could even gather his wits.

“_Prestissimo_,” Draco said, smiling slyly, “means ‘very fast’ or ‘as fast as possible’. Whereas...”

And he leaned forward again. This time, instead of pulling back immediately, he allowed the kiss to linger, but lightly, their lips barely brushing. When Harry slid his arms around Draco’s neck and tried to deepen the kiss, Draco pulled back and smiled at him. “Whereas,” Draco repeated, “_leggiero_ means light and delicate.”

“I’m starting to think I should learn more about music,” Harry said, a trifle dazedly. “What other terms are there that I should know?”

Draco’s smile widened. “Well, there’s _dolce_, which is a little like this...” Draco pressed a gentle kiss to one corner of Harry’s lips, then the other, before capturing Harry’s mouth for a slightly deeper kiss, noting with delight the slight flush on Harry’s face when they finally pulled apart. “_Dolce_ means sweetly, tenderly, Harry.”

Harry opened his eyes to meet Draco’s gaze. “In that case, how would you describe this, Draco?” And Harry brought their lips together again, more insistently this time, with growing urgency in the kiss.

When they finally broke apart, Draco was also flushed. “I think... I think that would probably count as _appassionato_, actually. Passionate.”

“Oh yes,” Harry murmured, leaning forward, but Draco pulled back, smiling.

“There’s one more I’d like to show you,” he said, eyeing Harry’s neck predatorily. “_Glissando_, which means a slide from one note to another.” He grinned. “I’m rather fond of that one.”

Harry gasped as Draco’s lips trailed down his neck, and he reached out to begin undoing the buttons of Draco’s shirt. Then Draco’s tongue found Harry’s pulse point, and Harry suddenly decided there had been quite enough teasing. He pulled away and stood up, circling to stand behind the piano stool, so that Draco had to swing his other leg over the stool to face Harry again, his back to the piano, eyes daring Harry to make a move.

Harry stepped closer, forcing Draco to lean back to maintain eye contact, and the hand Draco reached out to help him keep his balance struck the keys of the piano with a horrible _crash_. Harry paused for a moment, then smiled wickedly.

“Draco, I think I’ve solved your problem. I know exactly how you should end the piece.”

Caught rather off-guard by the sudden change of subject, Draco frowned up at him. “What in Merlin’s name are you talking about, Harry?”

“Your project,” Harry explained, still smiling. “I think you should end it the way you started it, only... from a different perspective. There’s a Muggle saying, you see, which goes, ‘We make beautiful music together.’”

Draco stared at him. “You know I’m not much impressed by Muggle sayings. What’s that one supposed to mean?”

Harry chuckled, moving even closer, until Draco was forced to lean back and balance himself completely against the piano, his hair pale against its dark finish. Beneath him, the keys clashed almost like they had before Harry had first entered the room.

Almost, but not quite.

“I can almost guarantee you’ll like this particular saying when I explain it to you, Draco,” Harry replied, still grinning. “But first, let me try this “slide” thing for myself...”

And he slid to his knees in front of Draco, trailing his hands down Draco’s body as he moved.

_Crash._

Outside, the Crup was jolted abruptly out of its doze by the sudden resumption of the horrible sound that had so disturbed it before. When the clashing showed no immediate signs of abating, the long-suffering dog whined and crawled back out from under the table to look for a quieter place to rest.

Really, it was rather unfortunate that it chose to hide in its masters’ bedroom, and was thus disturbed even more rudely just a few hours later.


End file.
